“Mulled Sack.”“Mulled Sack.”
once a captain in Downe’s foot regiment, was overtaken, captured, and hanged, but Cottington escaped. Jack Cottington began as a chimney-sweep, first as an apprentice, then on his own account, when he gained his soubriquet from his powers in drinking mulled sack. From this he graduated, and soon gained a high reputation as a pickpocket, his chief hunting-ground being churches and puritan meeting-houses, which he frequented demurely dressed in black with a blackroquelaire. He succeeded in robbing Lady Fairfax of a gold watch set with diamonds and a gold chain as she was on her way to Dr. Jacomb’s lecture at Ludgate; and a second time by removing the lynch-pin from her Ladyship’s carriage when on her way to the same church, he upset the coach, and giving her his arm, relieved her of another gold watch and seals. After this he became the captain of a gang of thieves and night prowlers, whom he organized and led to so much purpose that they alarmed the whole town. His impudence was so great that he was always ready to show off his skill as a thief inany public-house if he was paid for it, in a performance he styled “moving the bung.” He was not content to operate in the city, but visited the Parliament House and Courts of Law at Westminster, and was actually caught in the act of picking the Protector’s pocket. He narrowly escaped hanging for this, and on coming out of gaol took permanently to the highway, where he soon achieved a still greater notoriety. With half-a-dozen comrades he robbed a government waggon conveying money to the army, and dispersed the twenty troopers who escorted it, by attacking them as they were watering their horses. The waggon contained £4000, intended to pay the troops quartered at Oxford and Gloucester. Another account states that near Wheatley, Cottington put a pistol to the carrier’s head and bade him stand, at which both carter and guard rode off for their lives, fearing an ambuscade. The town of Reading he laid under frequent contribution, breaking into a jeweller’s shop in that town and carrying off the contents, which he sported on his person in London. Again at Reading, hearing that the Receiver-General was about to send £6000 to London in an ammunition waggon, he entered the receiver’s house, bound the family, and decamped with the money. Being by this time so notorious a character, he was arrested on suspicion, and committed for trial at Abingdon Assizes. There, however, being flush of cash, he found means to corrupt the jury and secure acquittal, although Judge Jermyn exerted all his skill to hang him. His fame was nowat its zenith. He became the burthen of street songs—a criminal hero who laughed the gallows to scorn. But about this time he was compelled to fly the country for the murder of Sir John Bridges, with whose wife he had had an intrigue. He made his way to Cologne, to the Court of Charles II., whom he robbed of plate worth £1500. Then he returned to England, after making overtures to Cromwell, to whom he offered certain secret papers if he might be allowed to go scot free. But he was brought to the gallows, and nobly deserved his fate.
Claude Duval is another hero whose name is familiar to all readers of criminal chronology. A certain halo of romance surrounds this notorious and most successful highwayman. Gallant and chivalrous in his bearing towards the fair sex, he would spare a victim’s pockets for the pleasure of dancing a “corranto” with the gentleman’s wife. The money he levied so recklessly he lavished as freely in intrigue. His success with the sex is said to have been extraordinary, both in London and in Paris. “Maids, widows, and wives,” says a contemporary account, “the rich, the poor, the noble, the vulgar, all submitted to the powerful Duval.” When justice at length overtook him, and he was cast for death, crowds of ladies visited him in the condemned hold; many more in masks were present at his execution. After hanging he lay in state in the Tangier Tavern at St. Giles, in a room draped with black and covered with escutcheons; eight wax tapers surrounded hisbier, and “as many tall gentlemen in long cloaks.” Duval was a Frenchman by birth—a native of Domfront in Normandy, once a village of evil reputation. Its curé was greatly surprised, it is said, at finding that he baptized as many as a hundred children and yet buried nobody. At first he congratulated himself in residing in an air producing such longevity; but on closer inquiry he found that all who were born at Domfront were hanged at Rouen.
Duval did not long honour his native country with his presence. On the restoration of Charles II. he came to London as footman to a person of quality; but soon took to the road. Numerous stories are told of his boldness, his address, and fertility of resource. One of the most amusing is that in which he got an accomplice to dress up a mastiff in a cow’s-hide, put horns on his head, and let him down a chimney into a room where a bridal merry-making was in progress. Duval, who was one of the guests, dexterously profited by the general dismay to lighten the pockets of an old farmer whom he had seen secreting a hundred pounds. When the money was missed it was supposed that the devil had flown away with it. On another occasion, having revisited France, he ingratiated himself with a wealthy priest by pretending to possess the secret of the philosopher’s stone. This he effected by stirring up a potful of molten inferior metal with a stick, within which were enclosed a number of sprigs of pure gold, as black lead is in a pencil. When the baser metals were consumed by the fire, the pure goldremained at the bottom of the pot. Overjoyed at Duval’s skill as an alchemist, the priest made him his confidant and bosom friend, revealing him his secret hoards, and how they were bestowed. One day, when the priest was asleep after dinner, Duval gagged and bound him, removed his keys, unlocked his strong boxes, and went off with all the valuables he could carry. Duval was also an adroit card-sharper, and won considerable sums at play by “slipping a card”; and he was most astute in laying and winning wagers on matters he had previously fully mastered. His career was abruptly terminated by his capture when drunk at a tavern in Chandos St., and he was executed, after ten years of triumph, at the early age of twenty-seven.
William Nevison, a native-born member of the same fraternity, may be called, says Raine, “the Claude Duval of the north. The chroniclers of his deeds have told us of his daring and his charities, for he gave away to the poor much of the money he took from the rich.” Nevison was born at Pontefract in 1639, and began as a boy by stealing his father’s spoons. When chastised by the schoolmaster for this offence, he bolted with his master’s horse, having first robbed his father’s strong box. After spending some time in London thieving, he went to Flanders and served, not without distinction, in a regiment of English volunteers commanded by the Duke of York. He returned presently to England, and took to theroad. Stories are told of him similar to those which made Duval famous. Nevison was on the king’s side, and never robbed Royalists. He was especially hard on usurers. On one occasion he eased a Jew of his ready money, then made him sign a note of hand for five hundred pounds, which by hard riding he cashed before the usurer could stop payment. Again, he robbed a bailiff who had just distrained a poor farmer for rent. The proceeds of the sale, which the bailiff thus lost, Nevison restored to the farmer. In the midst of his career, having made one grandcoup, he retired from business and spent eight years virtuously with his father. At the old man’s death he resumed his evil courses, and was presently arrested and thrown into Leicester Gaol. From this he escaped by a clever stratagem. A friendly doctor having declared he had the plague, gave him a sleeping draught, and saw him consigned to a coffin as dead. His friend demanded the body, and Nevison passed the gates in the coffin. Once outside, he was speedily restored to life, and resumed his old ways. He now extended his operations to the capital, and it was soon after this that he gained the soubriquet, given by Charles II., it is said, of “Swift Nick.” There seems to be very little doubt that Nevison was actually the hero of the great ride to York, commonly credited to Turpin. The story goes that he robbed a gentleman at Gadshill, then riding to Gravesend, crossed the Thames and galloped across Essex to Chelmsford. After baiting he rode on to Cambridge, and Godmanchester, thence to Huntingdon, where he baited hismare and slept for an hour; after that, holding to the north road, and not galloping his horse all the way, reached York the same afternoon. Having changed his clothes, he went to the bowling-green, where he made himself noticeable to the Lord Mayor. By and by, when recognized and charged with the robbery at Gadshill, Nevison called upon the mayor to prove that he had seen him at York; whereupon he was acquitted, “on the bare supposition that it was impossible for a man to be at two places so remote on one and the same day.”
Nevison appears to have been arrested and in custody in 1676. He was tried for his life, but reprieved and drafted into a regiment at Tangier. He soon deserted, and returning to England, again took to the road. He was next captured at Wakefield, tried, and sentenced to death; but escaped from prison, to be finally taken up for a trifling robbery, for which he suffered at York. The depositions preserved by the Surtees’ Society show that he was the life and centre of a gang of highway robbers who worked in association. They levied black mail upon the whole country side; attended fairs, race meetings, and public gatherings, and had spies and accomplices, inn-keepers and ostlers, who kept them informed of the movements of travellers, and put them in the way of “likely jobs” to be done. Drovers and farmers who paid a tax to them escaped spoliation; but all others were very roughly handled. The gang had its head-quarters at the Talbot Inn, Newark, where theykept a room by the year, and met at regular intervals to divide the proceeds of their robberies.
Many instances are recorded of another crime somewhat akin to highway robbery. The forcible abduction of heiresses was nothing new; but it was now prosecuted with more impudence and daring than heretofore. Luttrell tells us, under date 1st June, 1683, that one Mrs. Synderfin, a rich widow, was taken out of her carriage on Hounslow Heath, by a Captain Clifford and his comrades. They carried her into France to “Calice” against her will, and with much barbarous ill-usage made her marry Clifford. Mrs. Synderfin or Clifford was, however, rescued, and brought back to England. Clifford escaped, but presently returning to London was seized and committed to custody. He pleaded in defence his great passion for the lady, and his “seeing no other way to win her.” It was not mere fortune-hunting, he declared, as he possessed a better estate than hers. But the Lord Chief Justice charged the jury that they must find the prisoners guilty, which they did, and all were sentenced to imprisonment in Newgate for one year. Captain Clifford was also to pay a fine of £1000, two of his confederates £500 each, and two more £100. In the same authority is an account how—“Yesterday a gentleman was committed to Newgate for stealing a young lady worth £10,000, by the help of bailiffs, who arrested her and her maid in a false action, and had got them into a coach, but they were rescued.” Again, a year or two later, “oneSwanson, a Dane, who pretends to be a Deal merchant, is committed to Newgate for stealing one Miss Rawlins, a young lady of Leicestershire, with a fortune of £4000. Three bailiff’s and a woman, Swanson’s pretended sister, who assisted, are also committed, they having forced her to marry him. Swanson and Mrs. Bainton were convicted of this felony at the King’s Bench Bar; but the bailiffs who arrested her on a sham action were acquitted, with which the court was not well pleased. Swanson was sentenced to death, and executed. As also the woman; but she being found with child, her execution was respited.” A more flagrant case was the abduction of Miss Mary Wharton in 1690, the daughter and heiress of Sir George Wharton, by Captain James Campbell, brother to the Earl of Argyll, assisted by Sir John Johnson. Miss Wharton, who was only thirteen years of age, had a fortune of £50,000. She was carried away from her relations in Great Queen Street, on the 14th Nov., 1690, and married against her will. A royal proclamation was forthwith issued for the apprehension of Captain Campbell and his abettors. Sir John Johnson was taken, committed to Newgate, and presently tried and cast for death. “Great application was made to the king and to the relations of the bride to save his life,” but to no purpose, “which was thought the harder, as it appeared upon his trial that Miss Wharton had given evident proof that the violence Captain Campbell used was not so much against her will as her lawyers endeavoured to makeit.” Luttrell says, “Sir John refused pardon unless requested by the friends of Mrs. Wharton. On the 23rd December he went in a mourning coach to Tyburn, and there was hanged.” No mention is made of the arrest of Captain Campbell, whom we may conclude got off to the continent. But he benefited little by his violence, for a bill was brought into the House of Commons within three weeks of the abduction to render the marriage void, and this, although the Earl of Argyll on behalf of his brother petitioned against it, speedily passed both Houses.
The affair of Count Konigsmark may be classed with the foregoing, as another notorious instance of an attempt to bring about marriage with an heiress by violent means. The lady in this case was the last of the Percies, the only child and heiress to the vast fortune of Jocelyn, the Earl of Northumberland. Married when still of tender years to the Earl of Ogle, eldest son of the Duke of Newcastle, she was a virgin widow at fifteen, and again married against her consent, it was said, to Thomas Thynne, Esq., of Longleat;[72]“Tom of Ten Thousand,” as he was called on account of his income. This second marriage was not consummated; Lady Ogle either “repented herself of the match and fled into Holland,”[73]or her relatives wished to postpone her entry into the matrimonial state, and she was sent to live abroad.Previous to her second marriage, a young Swedish nobleman, Count Konigsmark, when on a visit to England, had paid his addresses to her, but he had failed in his suit. After his rejection he had conceived a violent hatred against Mr. Thynne. The Count was “a fine person of a man, with the longest hair I ever saw,[74]and very quick of parts. He was also possessed of great wealth and influence;” “one of the greatest men,” Sir John Reresby tells us, “in the kingdom of Sweden; his uncle being at that time governor of Pomerania, and near upon marrying the King’s (of Sweden) aunt.” Konigsmark could command the devoted service of reckless men, and among his followers he counted one Captain Vratz, to whom he seems to have entrusted the task of dealing with Mr. Thynne. Vratz, although a brave soldier, who had won his promotion at the siege of Mons, under the Prince of Orange, and to whom the King of Sweden had given a troop of horse, was willing to act as an assassin. The Count came to London, living secretly in various lodgings, as he declared to hide a distemper from which he suffered, but no doubt to direct privately the operations of his bravoes. Vratz associated with himself one Stern, a Swedish lieutenant, and Boroski, “a Polander,” who had arrived in England destitute, and whom, it was subsequently proved, the Count had furnished with clothes and arms. The murderers, having set a watch for their victim, attacked him at the corner of Pall Mall,about the spot where Her Majesty’s Theatre now stands, as he was riding on Sunday night the 21st February, 1681, in his carriage from the Countess of Northumberland’s house. One of them cried to the coachman, “Stop, you dog!” and a second, Boroski, immediately fired a blunderbuss charged with bullets into the carriage. Four bullets entered Mr. Thynne’s body, each of which inflicted a mortal wound. The murderers then made off.
The unfortunate gentleman was carried dying to his own house, where he was presently joined by the Duke of Monmouth, his intimate friend, Lord Mordaunt, and Sir John Reresby, specially sent by King Charles, who feared that some political construction would be put upon the transaction, and was anxious that the perpetrators of the crime should be apprehended. Reresby, who was an active magistrate, granted warrants at once against several suspected persons, and he himself, accompanied by the Duke of Monmouth and others, made a close search, which ended in the arrest of Vratz in the house of a Swedish doctor, in Leicester Fields. His accomplices were also soon taken, and all three were examined by the King in Council, when they confessed that they had done the deed at the instigation of Count Konigsmark, “who was lately in England.”[75]At the same time a Monsieur Foubert, who kept an “Academy” in London, which a younger brother of Count Konigsmark attended, was arrested as being privy to themurder, admitted that the elder brother had “arrived incognito ten days before the said murder, and lay disguised till it was committed, which gave great cause to suspect that the Count was at the bottom of the whole bloody affair.”[76]The King despatched Sir John Reresby to seize Konigsmark, “but the bird had flown; he went away betimes, on the morning of the day after the deed was perpetrated.”[77]He went down the river to Deptford, then to Greenwich, and the day after to Gravesend, where he was taken by two King’s messengers, accompanied by “Mr. Gibbons, servant to the Duke of Monmouth, and Mr. Kidd, gentleman to Mr. Thynne.” He was dressed “in a very mean habit, under which he carried a naked sword.” When seized he gave a sudden start, so that his wig fell off, and the fact that he wore a wig, instead of his own hair as usual, was remembered against him at his trial, as an attempt at disguise. The Count was carried to an inn in Gravesend, where he expressed very great concern when he heard that his men had confessed; declaring that it (the murder) was a stain upon his blood, “although one good action in the wars, or lodging on a counterscarp, would wash all that away.” His captors received the £200 reward, promised in theGazette, and in addition the £500 offered by Sir Thomas Thynne, Mr. Thynne’s heir.
They carried him at once to London, before the King in Council, where he was examined, but theCouncil being unwilling to meddle on account of his quality, as connected with the kingdom of Sweden, he was then taken before Chief Justice Pemberton, who could, if he thought fit, send him to gaol. He was examined again till eleven at night, and at last, “much against the Count’s desire,” committed him to Newgate. He stood upon his innocency, and confessed nothing, yet “people are well satisfied that he is taken.”[78]While in Newgate, Count Konigsmark was lodged in the governor’s house, and was daily visited by persons of quality. Great efforts were now made to obtain his release. The M. Foubert, already mentioned, came to Sir John Reresby, and offered him any money to withdraw from the prosecution, but the overtures were stoutly rejected, and his emissary was warned to be cautious “how he made any offers to pervert justice.” A more effectual attempt at bribery was probably made on the jury, of whom the prisoner challenged eighteen. He had their names on a list, and knew beforehand whom he could or could not trust. The Judge, Lord Chief Justice Pemberton, was also clearly in his favour. The defence set up was that Vratz had taken upon himself to avenge an affront offered by Mr. Thynne to his master, and Count Konigsmark denied all knowledge of his follower’s action. The Count tried to explain the privacy in which he lived, and his sudden flight. But the counsel for the prosecution laid great stress on the intimacy between him and the murderers;the absence of any object on the part of the latter, unless instigated by the former. The Chief Justice, however, summed up for the Count, assuring the jury that a master could not be held responsible for the acts of his servants, if ignorant of them, and that if they thought the Count knew nothing of the murder till after it was done, they must acquit him. Which they did, “to the no small wonder of the auditory,” as Luttrell says, “as more than probable good store of guineas went amongst them.” Konigsmark was set at liberty at the end of the trial, but before his discharge he was bound in heavy securities, in £2000 himself, and £2000 from two friends, to appear at the King’s Bench bar the first day of the following term. “Yet notwithstanding, the Count is gone into France, and it is much doubted whether he will return to save his bail.”[79]After his departure he was challenged by Lord Cavendish and Lord Mordaunt, but no duel came off, Konigsmark declaring that he never received the cartel till too late. His agents or accomplices, or whatever they may be called, were convicted and executed.[80]
Count Konigsmark did not long survive Mr. Thynne, nor did he succeed in winning Lady Ogle’s hand. That doubly widowed yet virgin wife presently married the Duke of Somerset, by whom she had two sons. As for Konigsmark, according to the ‘Amsterdam Historical Dictionary,’ quoted in Chambers’ ‘Book of Days,’ he resumed the careerof arms, and was wounded at Cambray in 1683. He afterwards went to Spain with his regiment, and distinguished himself on several occasions; after that he accompanied an uncle Otto William to the Morea, where he was present at the battle of Argas. In this action he so overheated himself that he was seized with pleurisy, and died at the early age of twenty-seven, within little more than four years of the murder of Mr. Thynne. It was another Count Konigsmark, near relative of this, Count Philip, whose guilty intrigue with Sophia Dorothea, wife of George I., when Elector of Hanover, led to his assassination in the Electoral palace.
In the foregoing the softer sex were either victims or the innocent incentives to crime. In the case of that clever and unscrupulous impostor Mary Moders, otherwise Carelton, commonly called the German Princess, it was exactly the opposite. The daughter of a chorister in Canterbury Cathedral, she married first a shoemaker; then, dissatisfied with her lot, ran off to Dover and committed bigamy with a doctor. She was apprehended for this, tried, and acquitted for want of evidence. She next passed over into Holland, and went the round of the German spas, at one of which she encountered a foolish old gentleman of large estate, who fell in love with her and offered marriage. She accepted his proposals and presents; but having cajoled him into intrusting her with a large sum to make preparations for the wedding, she absconded to Amsterdam and Rotterdam,where she took ship and came over to London. Alighting at the Exchange Tavern, kept by a Mr. King, she assumed the state and title of a princess, giving herself out as the ill-used child of Count Henry Van Wolway, a sovereign prince of the empire. John Carelton, a brother-in-law of her landlord’s, at once, “in the most dutiful and submissive manner,” paid his addresses to her, and she at last condescended to marry him. Carelton was presently undeceived by an anonymous letter, which proved his wife to be a cheat and impostor. The princess was arrested, committed to Newgate, and tried for polygamy at the Old Bailey, but was a second time acquitted. On her release, deserted by Carelton, she took to the stage, and gained some reputation, especially in a piece written for her entitled the ‘German Princess.’ Her fame spread through the town, and she was courted by numberless admirers, two of whom she played off against each other; and having fleeced both of several hundred pounds, flouted them for presuming to make love to a princess. Another victim to her wiles was an elderly man, “worth about £400 per annum,” who loaded her with gifts; he was “continually gratifying her with some costly present or another, which she took care to receive with an appearance of being ashamed he should heap so many obligations on her, telling him she was not worthy of so many favours.”[81]One night when her lover came home in liquor, she got him to bed, andwhen he was asleep rifled his pockets, securing his keys and a bill on a goldsmith for a hundred pounds. Opening all his escritoires and drawers, she stole everything, gold pieces, watches, seals, and several pieces of plate, and then made off. After this she led a life of vagabondage, moving her lodgings constantly, and laying her hands on all she could steal. She was adroit in deceiving tradesmen, and swindled first one and then another out of goods. At last she was arrested for stealing a silver tankard in Covent Garden, and committed again to Newgate. This time she was found guilty and cast for death, but the sentence was commuted to transportation. She was sent in due course to Jamaica, but within a couple of years escaped from the plantations, and reappeared in England. By some means she managed to pass off as a rich heiress, and inveigled a rich apothecary into marriage, but presently robbed him of above £300 and left him. Her next trick was to take a lodging in the same house with a watchmaker. One night she invited the landlady and the watchmaker to go to the play, leaving her maid, who was a confederate, alone in the house. The maid lost no time in breaking open the watchmaker’s coffers, and stole therefrom thirty watches, with about two hundred pounds in cash, which she carried off to a secure place in another part of the town. Meanwhile the “princess” had invited her dupes to supper at the Green Dragon Tavern in Fleet Street, where she managed to givethem the slip and joined her maid. This was one of the last of her robberies. Soon afterwards fate overtook her quite by accident. The keeper of the Marshalsea, in search of some stolen property, came to the house where she lodged, in New Spring Gardens, and saw her “walking in the two-pair-of-stairs room in a night-gown.” He went in, and continuing his search, came upon three letters, which he proceeded to examine. “Madam seemed offended with him, and their dispute caused him to look at her so steadfastly that he knew her, called her by her name, and carried away both her and her letters.”[82]She was committed and kept a prisoner till 16th January, 1673, when she was arraigned at the Old Bailey, as the woman Mary Carelton, for returning from transportation. On the last day of the sessions she received sentence of death, “which she received with a great deal of intrepidity.”
She appeared more gay and brisk than ever on the day of her execution. When the irons were removed from her on her starting for Tyburn, she pinned the picture of her husband Carelton to her sleeve, and carried it with her to the gallows. She discovered herself to a gentleman in the crowd as a Roman Catholic, and having conversed with him for some time in French, on parting said,Mon ami, le bon Dieu vous benisse. At the gallows she harangued the crowd at some length, and died as she had lived, a reckless although undoubtedly gifted and intelligent woman.
Prominent among the criminal names of this epoch is that of the informer, Titus Oates, no less on account of the infamy of his conduct than from the severe retribution which overtook him in the reign of James II. The arraignment of Green, Berry, and Laurence Hill for the trial of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, who were brought for the purpose “from Newgate to the King’s Bench Bar,” is a well-known judicial episode of the year 1678. Oates was the principal witness against them; but he was followed by Praunce, an approver, and others. After much evidence for and against, and much equivocation, the Lord Chief Justice Scroggs summed up the evidence strongly for conviction. When the jury soon returned a verdict of guilty, the Lord Chief Justice commended them, and said if it were the last word he had to speak he would have pronounced them guilty. Sentence was then given, and within a fortnight they were executed. These victims of the so-called Popish Plot were, however, amply and ruthlessly avenged. Macaulay tells the story. Oates had been arrested before Charles II.’s death for defamatory words, and cast in damages of £100,000. He was then, after the accession of James II., tried on two indictments of perjury, and it was proved beyond doubt that he had by false testimony deliberately murdered several guiltless persons. “His offence, though in a moral light murder of the most aggravated kind, was in the eye of the law merely a misdemeanour.” But the tribunal which convicted made its punishment
Oates in the pillory.Oates in the pillory.
proportionate to the real offence. Brutal Judge Jeffries was its mouthpiece, and he sentenced him to be unfrocked and pilloried in Palace yard, to be led round Westminster Hall, with an inscription declaring his infamy over his head; to be pilloried in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and after an interval of two days to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. He was to be imprisoned for life, and every year to be brought from his dungeon and exposed in different parts of the capital. When on the pillory he was mercilessly pelted, and nearly torn to pieces. His first flogging was executed rigorously in the presence of a vastcrowd, and Oates, a man of strong frame, long stood the lash without a murmur. “But at last his stubborn fortitude gave way. His bellowings were frightful to hear. He swooned several times; but the scourge still continued to descend. When he was unbound it seemed he had borne as much as the human frame could bear without dissolution.... After an interval of forty-eight hours Oates was again brought out from his dungeon. He seemed unable to stand, and it was necessary to drag him to Tyburn on a sledge.” He was again flogged, although insensible, and a person present counted the stripes as seventeen hundred. “The doors of the prison closed upon him. During many months he remained ironed in the darkest hole in Newgate.” A contemporary account written by one of his own side declares he received “upwards of two thousand lashes—such a thing was never inflicted by any Jew, Turk, or heathen but Jeffries.... Had they hanged him they had been more merciful; had they flayed him alive it is a question whether it would have been so much torture.”[83]
Dangerfield, another informer of the Oates type, but of lesser guilt, was also convicted and sentenced to be similarly flogged from Aldgate to Newgate, andfrom Newgate to Tyburn. “When he heard his doom he went into agonies of despair, gave himself up for dead, and chose a text for his funeral. His forebodings were just. He was not indeed scourged quite so severely as Oates had been; but he had not Oates’s iron strength of body and mind.” On his way back to prison he was assaulted by Mr. Francis, a Tory gentleman of Gray’s Inn, who struck him across the face with a cane and injured his eye. “Dangerfield was carried dying into Newgate. This dastardly outrage roused the indignation of the bystanders. They seized Francis, and were with difficulty restrained from tearing him in pieces. The appearance of Dangerfield’s body, which had been frightfully lacerated by the whip, inclined many to believe that his death was chiefly if not wholly caused by the stripes which he had received.” The Government laid all the blame on Francis, who was tried and executed for murder.
Religion and politics still continued to supply their quota of inmates. The law was still cruelly harsh to Roman Catholics, Quakers, and all Nonconformists.
The Fifth Monarchy men in 1661, when discomfited and captured, were lodged in Newgate, to the number of twenty or more. Venner, the ringleader, was amongst them. The State Trials give the trial of one John James, who was arraigned at the King’s Bench for high treason. He was found guilty of compassing the death of the king, and suffered the cruel sentence then in force for the crime. James has left somedetails of the usage he received in Newgate, especially in the matter of extortion. Fees to a large amount were exacted of him, although a poor and needy wretch, “originally a small coal-man.” In the press-yard he paid 16s.to the keeper Hicks for the use of his chamber, although he only remained there three or four days. The hangman also came to demand money, that “he might be favourable to him at his death,” demanding twenty pounds, then falling to ten, at last threatening, unless he got five, “to torture him exceedingly. To which James said he must leave himself to his mercy, for he had nothing to give him.” Yet at the execution, the report says the sheriff and the hangman were so civil to him as to suffer him to be dead before he was cut down. After that he was dismembered; some of them were burnt, the head and quarters brought back to Newgate in a basket, and exposed upon the gates of the city. Venner and several others suffered in the same way.
Many Quakers were kept in Newgate, imprisoned during the king’s pleasure for refusing to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. Thus John Crook, Isaac Grey, and John Bolton were so confined, and incurred a præmunire or forfeiture of their estates. But the must notable of the Quakers were Penn and Mead. In its way this is a most remarkable trial, on account of the overbearing conduct of the Bench towards the prisoners. In 1670 these two, the first described as gentleman, the second as linen-draper, were indicted at the Old Bailey for having caused atumultuous assembly in Gracechurch Street. The people collected, it was charged, to hear Penn preach. The demeanour of the prisoners in the court was so bold, that it drew down on them the anger of the recorder, who called Penn troublesome, saucy, and so forth. The jury were clearly in their favour, and brought in a verdict of not guilty, but the court tried to menace them. The Lord Mayor, Sir Samuel Stirling, was especially furious with Penn, crying, “Stop his mouth; gaoler, bring fetters and stake him to the ground.” At last the jury, having refused to reconsider their verdict, were locked up; while Penn and Mead were remanded to Newgate. Next day the jury came up, and adhered to their verdict. Whereupon the recorder fined them forty marks apiece for not following his “good and wholesome advice,” adding, “God keep my life out of your hands.”[84]The prisoners demanded their liberty, “being freed by the jury,” but were detained for their fines imposed by the judge for alleged contempt of court. Penn protested violently, but the recorder cried, “Take him away!” and the prisoners were once more haled to Newgate. Edward Bushell, one of the above-mentioned jurors, who was committed to Newgate in default of payment of fine, subsequently sued out a Habeas Corpus, and was brought before Lord Chief Justice Vaughan, who decided in his favour, whereon he and the other jurymen were discharged from gaol.
There were Roman Catholics too in Newgate, convicted of participation in the Popish plot. Samuel Smith the ordinary publishes in 1679 an account of the behaviour of fourteen of them, “late Popish malefactors, whilst in Newgate.” Among them were Whitehead, provincial, and Fenwick, procurator, of the Jesuits in England, and William Harcourt, pretended rector of London. The account contains a description of Mr. Smith’s efforts at conversion and ghostly comfort, which were better meant than successful.
After the revolution of 1688 there was an active search after Romish priests, and many were arrested; among them two bishops, Ellis and Leyburn, were sent to Newgate. They were visited in gaol by Bishop Burnet, who found them in a wretched plight, and humanely ordered their situation to be improved. Other inmates of Newgate at this troublous period were the Ex-Lord Chief Justice Wright and several judges. It was Wright who had tried the seven bishops. Jeffries had had him made a judge, although the Lord Keeper styled him the most unfit person in the kingdom for that office. Macaulay says very few lawyers of the time surpassed him in turpitude and effrontery. He died miserably in Newgate about 1690, where he remained under a charge of attempting to subvert the Government.
Press-yard described—Charges for admission—Extortionate fees paid to turnkeys and governor—The latter’s perquisites—Night carousing in Press-yard—Penalty for excess—Days how spent—Arrival of Jacobite prisoners—Discussed by lower officials—Preparations for them—Their appearance and demeanour—High prices charged for gaol lodgings—They live royally—First executions abate their gaiety—Escapes—Keeper superseded by officials specially appointed by Lord Mayor—Strictness of newrégime—A military guard mounts—Rioting and revels among the Jacobites once more checked by execution of members of the party—Rumours of an amnesty—Mr. Freeman, who fired a pistol in theatre when Prince of Wales was present, committed to Press-yard—Freeman’s violent conduct—Prisoners suffer from overcrowding and heat—Pardons—Rob Roy in Newgate—Other prisoners in Press-yard—Major Bernardi—His history and long detentions—Dies in gaol after forty years’ imprisonment.
Press-yard described—Charges for admission—Extortionate fees paid to turnkeys and governor—The latter’s perquisites—Night carousing in Press-yard—Penalty for excess—Days how spent—Arrival of Jacobite prisoners—Discussed by lower officials—Preparations for them—Their appearance and demeanour—High prices charged for gaol lodgings—They live royally—First executions abate their gaiety—Escapes—Keeper superseded by officials specially appointed by Lord Mayor—Strictness of newrégime—A military guard mounts—Rioting and revels among the Jacobites once more checked by execution of members of the party—Rumours of an amnesty—Mr. Freeman, who fired a pistol in theatre when Prince of Wales was present, committed to Press-yard—Freeman’s violent conduct—Prisoners suffer from overcrowding and heat—Pardons—Rob Roy in Newgate—Other prisoners in Press-yard—Major Bernardi—His history and long detentions—Dies in gaol after forty years’ imprisonment.
THEsituation of this section of the prison has been already indicated. It was intended more especially for State prisoners, or those incarcerated on “commitments of State,” and was deemed to be part and parcel of the governor’s house, not actually within the precincts of the prison. This was a pious fiction, put forth as an excuse for exacting fees in excess of the amounts prescribed by Art of Parliament.A sum of twenty guineas was charged for admission to this favoured spot; in other words, “for liberty of having room enough to walk two or three of a breadth.”[85]“The gentlemen admitted here are moreover under a necessity of paying 11s.each per week, although two and sometimes three lie in a bed, and some chambers have three or four beds in them.”[86]The act referred to specially provided that keepers might not charge more than half-a-crown per week as rent for every chamber. This rule the governor of Newgate—“for this haughty commander-in-chief over defenceless men is styled by the same name as the constable of the Tower”—entirely ignored, and the prisoner committed to his custody had to decide between submitting to the extortion, “or take up his abode in the common gaol,” where he had thieves and villains for his associates, and was “perpetually tormented and eaten up by distempers and vermin.”
The extortion practised is graphically described by one who endured it. The author of the ‘History of the Press-yard,’ after having been mulcted on first arrival at the lodge for drink and “garnish,”[87]was, although presumably a State prisoner, and entitled to better treatment, at once cast in the condemned hold. In this gruesome place, which has been already described, he lay “seized with a panic dread” at the survey of his new tenement, and willing tochange it for another on almost any terms. “As this was the design of my being brought hither, so was I made apprized of it by an expected method; for I had not bewailed my condition more than half-an-hour, before I heard a voice from above crying out from a board taken out of my ceiling, which was the speaker’s floor, ‘Sir, I understand your name is ——, and that you are a gentleman too well educated to take up your abode in a vault set apart only for thieves, parricides, and murderers. From hence criminals after sentence of death are carried to the place of execution, and from hence you may be removed to a chamber equal to one in any private house, where you may be furnished with the best conversation and entertainment, on a valuable consideration.’” The speaker went on to protest that he acted solely from good will; that he was himself a prisoner, and had suffered at first in the same manner, but had paid a sum to be removed to better quarters, “which he thanked God he enjoyed then to his heart’s content, wanting for nothing that a gaol could afford him.” The victim begged to know the terms, and to be put in communication with the proper officer to make a contract for release. The other promised accordingly, and a quarter of an hour afterwards “clang went the chain of my door and bolts, and in comes a gentleman-like man of very smiling aspect,” who apologized profusely, swearing that those who had ill-used a gentleman in such an unhandsome manner should be well trounced for it. “He moreoverexcused the want of suitable entertainment for persons of condition in prison-houses, and assured me that I should be immediately conducted to the governor’s house, who would take all imaginable care of my reception. After this he very kindly took me by the hand to lead me down into the lodge, which I rightly apprehended as a motive to feel my pulse, and therefore made use of the opportunity to clap two pieces, which he let my hand go to have a fast grip of, in his.”
His deliverer was the head turnkey, by name Bodenham Rouse, whom he accompanied to the Lodge, and there again stood drink. “We gave our service to one another in a glass of wine, drawn by Dame Spurling, the fat hostess who kept the tap in the Lodge.” Over the friendly glass terms were propounded and accepted, and having paid down his twenty guineas—a large sum, excused on the grounds that Mr. Pitt the governor had paid £1000 for his place—the prisoner followed his guide through Phœnix court into the governor’s house, where he had the honour of saluting and taking a dram of arrack with the great Mr. Pitt, who “as a mark of his favourable intentions to me, gave order for furnishing me a bed with clean sheets, after I had paid the woman that brought them to my barrack of a chamber in the press-yard, whither I was soon conveyed through a door with a great iron chain to it, five shillings.”
The new-comer was cordially welcomed and introducedby “George, the cobbler of Highgate,”[88]apparently a prison official, to a congenial companion, who explained to him the ways of the place. It was in the first place incumbent on every arrival to pay his footing. About seven or eight o’clock the entrance fee was demanded. It had previously been only six bottles of wine, and tobacco in proportion. This was now raised to ten or twelve bottles, which, if a prisoner was straitened for money, “could be scored at the bar of the honest tapster, who, though he lost several hundred pounds by that method of proceeding, was not discouraged from going on with it in favour of unhappy gentlemen.” This talk lasted over pipes and a pot of stout, until notice was brought by “a person in gray hairs, who had then the keys of the press-yard, that all things were ready for an evening refreshment, and that honest Tom the butler had carried the bottles, pipes, and tobacco into our refectory, called the tap-room.” Here the giver of the entertainment seated himself at the head of the table, and the guests on each side of him. Among them was a major who had been in the army[89]so long that he was of the same standing as the Duke of Marlborough, and “commanded over General Mallow, now a greatofficer in Spain, when he was an ensign on the Irish establishment.” Another was “a gentleman, who being of the late King James’s Horse Guards, had adhered to that exiled monarch’s fortunes till he was driven out of Ireland.” Both these gentlemen had married since their confinement, the one, though near seventy,[90]“to a young woman not much above twenty ... the other, of less advanced years, to a widow gentlewoman of a like age, who lived very comfortably with him—” of course in the prison.
They met the new-comer with “all possible civility, and indeed made the hours pass over more agreeably than he could have expected in that place.” They drank deep and late. “I continued whipping out sixpences to advance more bottles, till our cheerfulness was turned into drowsiness, and merriment became the subject of dispute with some of my fellow-prisoners, so it was thought high time by the most sober of us to break up and retire to our chambers, with the ceremony of the turnkeys locking each of the two staircase-doors after us.” The new prisoner, furnished with a clay candlestick, “because he had not yet equipped himself with one of earthenware,” found his way up three pairs of stairs to a large room, which had its entrance through the chapel. The bars were as thick as his wrist, and very numerous. The stone walls, which had borne the same hue for above half a century, were bedaubed with texts of Scripture written in charcoal, such as“Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward,” “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept Thy word.” There were bedsteads made of boards for the bedding, but neither “flocks nor feathers to make one.” The tables and chairs were of like antiquity and use. “And Potiphar’s wife’s chambermaid’s hat at the coffee-house in Chelsea had as fair a claim to any modern fashion as any one thing in the room.” Our author is disgusted at the accommodation provided for the price, twelve shillings a week, and another twelve pence for the woman or nurse who cleaned the place. But he is consoled by being told what he had escaped by not being locked up on the master’s side, “where, besides a thousand other inconveniences, I must have paid one and sixpence per diem for leave to associate myself with pickpockets in a dark and stinking cellar.”
The following morning he was admitted into other mysteries of the place. All who had exceeded the previous night had to pay the usual forfeit, a groat in drink for the turnkeys, which the latter collect very punctually, and at the payment of the forfeit, “as many persons as think fit may be present.” The names of the offenders having been called over with all ceremony, all pleaded guilty and promptly paid the fine, which was forthwith spent in liquor, to be consumed by the cobbler of Highgate and his fellows. From this time forward the novice was free of the place, and was looked upon by the other prisoners as one of themselves. The morning passed with the ordinarydiversions. Talk over the persons of distinction who had gone to Tyburn out of such and such a room, was varied by the perusal of newspapers hired out by the turnkeys, and the discussion of the literary merits of the last dying speech composed by a condemned prisoner, who was on the brink of the gallows. One is given by the author of ‘The Press-yard’ in extenso, the oration of one J—— B—ggs, an “orange merchant,” sentenced to die for outwitting the Bank of England, a flowery piece of rhetoric, hardly worth transcribing, which wound up with these words,—
“So much by way of oration. Here, Jack (Ketch), do your office decently and with despatch; these clothes, hat, and wig are yours; you will find fifteen shillings and some grocery in my pocket. Now, Mr. Ordinary, you may sing the psalm if you please, and I’ll endeavour as well as it is possible to bear a bob with you, but let it be none of your penitential ones.”
Thus passed the day. Towards evening visitors began to flock in from outside to take their bottle and comfort “the distressed inhabitants” of Newgate press-yard in the only way possible, by inordinate drinking. Of the visitors some were friends and relatives, others came from sheer predilection for criminal society. Among them was an alderman’s son, “who, not having so much prudence as his father, rendered himself suspected by keeping suspicious company.” Political affinities attracted more: the eminent merchant, “who would have done much better to relieve the Militia officer (? Bernardi), hecame to carouse with, at a distance, than to appear so publicly in support of a person obnoxious to the Government;” or the clergyman, “who had made himself famous at Whitechapel, or in Saint Laurence’s Church, whom it behoved in a particular manner to take heed of his ways, since his zeal had already gained him the opposite party’s displeasure.” All of these came and went as they pleased. Conviviality was general, liquor was freely called for, potations were deep, and the press-yard of Newgate at night time was like the tap-room of a common inn.
The moment was one of considerable political excitement. The Pretender’s first attempt had collapsed in the north, and the press-yard was about to be crowded with more eminent guests. Our author is aroused one fine morning by loud joy-bells pealing from the churches, and he learns from his Jacobite companion that the “king’s (Pretender’s) affairs were ruined, and that the generals Willis and Carpenter had attacked the Jacobite forces in Preston, and taken all prisoners at discretion.” Newgate is convulsed by the news. Its officers are wild with delight, “calling for liquor after an extravagant manner, and drinking to their good luck, which was to arise from the ruin and loss of lives and fortunes in many good families.” A dialogue is overheard between the hangman, the deputy bed-maker, and a turnkey’s understrapper to the following effect:—